I have a few questions. I've been a raw vegan since June-ish and when I changed my eating habits I was fine for a few months. I was only consuming raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and cold-pressed olive oil (no salt, spices, cooked vegetables, ect.). I have no food allergies and I'm not lactose intolerant (I know, I've checked). Also, no peanuts, cashews, or other legumes. After a while I started feeling this horrible pain around my whole abdominal area. I went to my doctor to see what the problem was and she said she didn't know and suggested that I start juicing instead (I don't think I will ever be willing to give up solid food though). What I'm wondering is if I am doing anything wrong??? Also, do I need to consume salt or is it not really that important???

Well, did you change from the raw food diet to something else after a few months, then got the symptoms? Or have to stayed on the raw food diet with enough fruits, green veggies, some nuts and seeds?

You might check out how your digestive system is doing. Depending on how much toxic waste you are having to detox it could put a strain on your digestive system, which includes the internal organs that do the cleansing, and your intestinal tract.

You could do some massaging of that area, and work on it, getting it moving so it can get the food and then the waste material flowing. You can try some sprouted grains or sprouted legumes and or things like alfalfa, etc..see if you need additional bulky fibrous foods.

If you are eating celery on a consistant basis you don't need to add additional salt. You might try adding some seaweed items if you like those for minerals, salt, and iodine.

A good probiotic or prebiotic would be good also. Green juices are good, fresh fruit juices also. Just add them in place of a small meal, or for a snack.

I'm sure there will be lots of suggestions coming your way shortly.

Love,
Prism

Perhaps you are experiencing some digestion problems. Are you properly food combining your meals. Mono-meals are the simplest meals to digest. Also, if you eat a heavy fat meal, eating fruit meals shortly afterwards can be a challenge.

Try this: eat your fruit meals earlier in the day, and don't eat your fat meals until you've finished your last fruit meal.

Or better yet, have some days where you don't eat any fat.

Prism:

Umm...I haven't really changed very much. I mean, for a while I was eating whole wheat that I had soaked for a while (12 to 24 hours) but then there was a "worm incident" in my kitchen cabinets and I decided not to purchase it anymore. Other than that, it's pretty much the same. As for my digestive system, I've had problems with the functioning of the muscules. The reason why I started going "raw" was because I got sick during summer. I knew I had to do something fast so I fasted for about 6 days on water and fresh fruit juice. Then I progressivly started eating certain foods starting with fruits, then vegetables, then olive oil, and finally the nuts and stuff. I'm not sure if that was enough but I thought so.

Bryan:

I'm not really sure how to properly combine foods. Can you help me with that??? Also, I don't really cut or prepare my food very often (I just wash it most of the time) and I swallow 1 tablespoon of olive oil on its own (I have a thing for olive oil. LOL I should totally move to Italy one day). And what's a mono-meal??? I mean, I can probably ball-park it but I just want to be safe here. Also, I generally eat once in the morning and once at night (fruits and nuts/seeds in the morning and vegetables for dinner).


By the way, thank you both for the suggestions. I really appreciate it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2007 04:27AM by zeytun.

Is the pain continuous or is it a digestive pain? If it is a digestive pain, food combining will help.

The simplest meals to digest are mono-meals - a meal with only one ingredient. So that might look like a meal of 4 bananas or a meal of 6 oranges. Just one kind of food, but a bunch of it so you get enough calories. Fruit make the best mono-meal, but leafy greens also work - romaine lettuce and celery being my favorite greens.

It would be better for your morning meals to be fruits, and your evening meal to be vegetables and nuts/seeds. This way you are not combining fruits with fat, which can cause problems.

Nuts and seeds usually go well with vegetables.

But if you only eat fruit in the morning, you may get hungry during the afternoon. So you may need to eat a second fruit meal to carry you until the end of the day.

Here are some articles on Food Combining.

If you are experiencing digestive pain, either mono-meals or practicing good food combining is definitely worthwhile.

I've found that food combining has definitely helped most of my digestive problems and my energy levels. Fit For Life is a good book that explains everything in a way thats easy to understand.

I would strongly suggest mono-meals, smaller meals and keep the heavier fat oriented meals towards the day end. If you need more meals when eating smaller, so be it. Add some physical activity and give it time. I wouldn't complicate things with juicing and other ideas at first. Stick to the basics for a week or two without fail. Everytime you switch you confuse your digestion, let find it find a stability.

Because of the 'worm' incident you might want to do a simple parasite and worm cleanse, just purchase the tinctures of choice and use them according to directions on their bottles, the 3 most important to get are wormwood, cloves, and fresh green black walnut hulls..if you get some other herbs mixed along with those that's ok.

Also, you might try adding in more veggies for an earlier afternoon meal, as some of Bryans are the romaine lettuce and celery and those would be good. Cut out the nuts and seeds for a while, a week just to see if that helps. Or add 1-2 T of the nut butters to your afternoon snack or even. meal. I would cut out the olive oil also, as it drives the liver to produce bile and then the excess bile is stored in your gallbladder and if you have digestive issues the overt oils can be a problem. Or try adding it as a salad dressing with some Bragg apple cider vinegar or lemon juice.

Seaveggies also are good for you, as it's a source for minerals, salt and Iodine. If you aren't eating any, try adding some to your baths to soak in, seaweed, Epsom Salt, or Celtic sea salt. You might want to add 1/4 teaspoon approx. of celtic sea salt to your diet..or just try it for a week as the only change so you know if it helped or not.

If your digestive system is inflamed, green juices would be soothing and less strain on digesting, you can add a probiotic to aid with planting some good helpful bacteria, and consider adding 1-2 drops of Lugol's Iodine 5% solution 2x a week.

Love,
Prism

Be careful with raw veggies though, they can be very taxing with digestive issues. Green juicing can also trigger upsets in some cases, go sloooow with ANY juicing. Apple Cider Vinegar is evil and can bring many to their knees if IBS is creeping its head. For your sake I hope it's not. A probiotic, is maybe the only safe "try something" I would attempt.

tanawana, i'm interested in knowing why apple cider vinegar isn't good for you. i usually have this 4-5x a week on my salad, so if it's "evil" i want to know why! thanks

Apple cider contains acetic acid, which is also in white vinegar, which is a toxin. It requires energy in your body to remove this toxin, that could be going towards your healing rather than detoxing last night's salad.

Try using lemon juice instead of apple cider vinegar as an acid for your salad dressings. Actually any kind of citrus juice will work - limes, oranges, tangerines, grapefruit.

If you are using oils in in your salad dressings, try using whole raw foods instead - avocados, nuts, seeds, etc.

Thanks Bryan, I know the negative effects it can and does bring to troubled digestive systems - But you word it with better, fact based reasoning :O)

There's a world of difference in a natural organic raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar that has the "Mother" in it, compared to the man made synthetic crap at the stores like white and other vinegars. One is poison, one is very good source of malic acid and will help with digestion issues, breaking up stone formations and much more.

If anyone here agrees that fermented foods are good for you, then how can you argue against the good kind of apple cider vinegar? I've seen it work for many others, and I have first hand experience in using it. Where I was using it 3 x a day at 3 T a day, I'm not using it daily, but occasionally I still eat some, and I still like it for my baths on occasion and for a hair rinse, in my opinion as always.

As always, we caution everyone to take their own health issues into their own hands, and always research until you feel comfortable with trying something. Not everything works in the same way for everyone.

Love,
Prism

He-he, try having a serious digestive issue and see what even natural organic raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar can do to ya. But like you said, everyone reacts differently and it may not be a bother. I just felt better to be safe is all.

Prism,

I used to use Braggs when I first started raw. For where my body was at the time, it felt OK to use. But as I healed my body, my body began to not like things like braggs. And as I did research into it, I found out it contains some harmful things.

As a transitional food, assuming it feels good, Braggs is fine. But if one is experiencing symptoms that they no longer want, they may want to try omitting Braggs from their diet and see if they have improvements. However, if one believes that Braggs is a health food, they may never even think of cutting it out of their diet.

I've heard all the stories about how Braggs healed this or that. Well, there are as many stories of how antibiotics healed people. Does that mean antibiotics are healthful?

Raw foods are not medicines. Raw foods do not heal the body. The body heals the body. Raw foods provide the highest nutrition and cleanest energy your body can use to heal itself. But it is the body doing to work, not the foods we eat. And sometimes in illness, even eating the best raw foods can hinder the body from healing itself.

Yes, I agree with that something that we used as a crutch may not be the best thing overall, it's used as a transitional type item. I do find I use it much less and my pain from sciatica has not returned, but just having that chronic pain go away was a miracle and allowed me and my body to focus onto the next healing that was going on.

I can't argue about the use it had for that baby though, when it worked so well for her. She has parents, they have their ideas of childrearing, I had to work in that context and use the formula that they had which was not ideal for the baby, but while the acv worked for her, it would allow time for her to eat in peace, grow a little and eat some fresh fruits which she was doing, thereby lessoning dependence on the formula. Then you can get the parents more on board with a more healthful diet for baby, or child.

It's all relative, and while we want to encourage and use only whole natural raw foods as the foremost and ultimate goal, sometimes you have to allow some of these 'transitional' items which are the lessor of some other evils..like anti-biotics, etc..and Dr.'s prescriptions for various symptoms. Most Dr.'s do not do anything else than that..while here we offer more evidence and help with curing and not needing those 'crutches' thru the raw foods diet.

Bryan, your body (we'll leave out your mind, and spirit, emotions as they are just as healthy I'm sure) is so clean now, so pure, that you are where so many of us strive to be. The less than as perfect foods for you now would certainly be less desirable for you, and have quicker body response than many of us or those just starting out.

If you ever want to be my coach for 30 days, and see about if I need anything other than raw foods for my resistant health issues, be my guest..I'm all yours! But in my opinion, my body is not ready for that although I could stand to be 100% raw and do much better while I also took my Lugol's Iodine. Just know this, I have to function for some work, I don't want to gain 25 lbs. and lose my hair while I'm
at the rebuilding stage..and I'm only 5 years into the raw foods, with some ups and downs, but I figure I've got 2 more years to get to the stage of mostly a rebuilt and healthier body.

I like the story that is in Roe Gallo's book of Perfect Body where she takes her son's girlfriend home with her to help with her health issues, which were the usual, overweight, ill a lot, etc. She took her for I think a month, cared for her, took care of her, fed her, etc..and the girlfriend was much healthier at the end of course but in the beginning she was a wreck, and couldn't have done much for herself due to the detoxing.

Love,
Prism

If I eat mono-meals will I still get enough of all the vitamins and minerals my body needs??? And will it still be helpful if I eat one mono-meal(btw, you're right Bryan, I might need to eat more because of the exclusion of nuts/seeds) and a "regular" meal per day???

You will get enough vitamins and mineral as long as you are eating and absorbing enough food to meet your energy needs, and those foods consists of raw fresh fruits and vegetables. The more mono meals per day you eat, the less energy will be required for digestion. This should mean more pleasurable eating since the pain will be gone.

If you wanted to, you could eat all your meals mono. But for the last meal of the day, it probably isn't necessary (though do pay attention to proper food combining).

Let us know how your digestion is doing as you play with this.

Bryon,
I have been doing what youre saying backwards. nothing for breakfast. a big salad about mid morning, but before noon, and fruit the rest of the day, and then another salad at dinner. ok wel sorta backwards. what I use for dressing on the salad is simply diced tomato. but I like to add an avacado to the salad, both salads. the mid day salad and the evening salad. So I think this may be while I feel tired during the day. So now I am going to just eat fruit/greens all day with only one avacado at dinner. I already eliminated seeds. I was eating soaked sunflower seeds daily, and handfulls of them WITH sweet fruit and I was told this is bad food combining so I will try just fruit all day , then the salad.But I was also told to up avacado intake to help stabilize my weight from all the weight loss due to eating raw, then back off them when it begins stabilizing. I love avacados so I was happy to have them in my diet of being RAW. Hey, theyre better for you than whoppers,lol. I am going to shoot for pure fruit and greens and get away from seeds and avacado and work on 1 avacado a day. I was also mixing avacado with onion and tomatoes,raw onion that is and just eating that out of the bowl because it it SOOOOO good and i never had problems digesting it but was told it is acidic and a bad food combo.And also to eat one fruit at a time and if Im going to mix at all mix sweet fruits with sub-acid fruits and not mix acid fruits with sweet or sub-acid. keep acid fruits seperate and melons eat by themselves.I can do this!! today I am going to have only cantelope as my mono for the day but I was wondering if you can eat cantelope with greens in a smoothie?
thanks for your insights, this is a great forum
rob

come the first of the year i want to go totally raw I am turning 50 and i have been 75% vegetairian but that is not enough for me I need my life back. Any suggestions on where to start? I thought i would have a smothie and barley grass for breakfast and go from there. I will quit drinking coffee that will be a biggy for me. If any one can steer me in the right direction i would like that. I just finish the book God's Way to Ultimate Health